Porsche to pull Boxster production from Magna over Opel stake?
2009 Porsche Boxster S – Click above for high-res image gallery
After a great deal of international haggling, Magna ended up winning the competition for Opel. One of the many questions to be answered now is: How will the deal affect Magna's engineering and assembly business? Even as companies like VW and BMW have said they would be looking closely at working with Magna if it owned Opel, Magna head Frank Stronach must have been convinced he could keep his clients happy.
That hasn't happened yet, and now Porsche is saying it might take future production away from Magna. The Stuttgart firm contracted Magna to build the next Boxster and Cayman in 2013 in Austria, but now it's worried that its costs and engineering might end up in the wrong hands if left with Magna.
Porsche's alternatives would be to keep Boxster production in-house at Zuffenhausen, where the cars are currently made, or to contract with Karmann, which just earned a chunk of VW's electric car business. The alternatives for Magna, though, aren't so clear – with BMW and VW also casting wary eyes, does it continue with the carmaker adventure at the risk of losing the business that got it to the top in the first place?
[Source: Autoweek]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
abbas350 9:31AM (9/28/2009)
i don't buy it for a minute
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Jei 11:06AM (9/28/2009)
No. I think Magna can continue to keep its treasure chest of corporate secrets safe just as it has done in the past. But, in order be more transparent among its clients, Magna may have to voluntarily split the business into 2 separate operating entities. On entity to handle the brand owner & manufacturer aspects, and the other entity to handle its usual clients' vehicle, component assembly.
It can be done, but Magna has to be completely professional.
dukeisduke 9:35AM (9/28/2009)
I can't blame Porsche, for being worried about their intellectual property potentially winding up in the hands of the Russians. As far as production goes, they could always farm the cars out to Valmet.
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Dr. Greenthumb 10:54AM (9/28/2009)
I guess GM wasn't the only company that worried about Magna being in bed with the Russians. History being the best teacher, they have stolen and reproduced US technology before.
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Avinash machado 10:28AM (9/28/2009)
Maybe RHJ will end up with Opel after all.
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Mattias 10:36AM (9/28/2009)
The Boxster currently is made in Finland at Valmet. Rather than producing it in Zuffenhausen, Porsche would probably choose to enlarge the Leipzig plant where currently the Panamera and the Cayenne are made. Her in the Saxony land and wages are much cheaper than in Swabia.
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psarhjinian 10:56AM (9/28/2009)
This has more to do with VW (Porsche's "parent") wanting Opel dead than Porsche's intellectual property.
VW has been making noise about this for a while, and it has everything to do with the fact that Opel under Magna would continue to be a competitor to them, while under RHJ or someone similar they would be either a) back in GM's incompetent hands and/or b) gutted and parceled out to the competition. Intercompany suppliers selling to competitors is nothing new (eg, Toyota owns Aisin and Denso, both who sell to other companies. Nissan does the same with Jatco, GM and Ford had Delphi and Visteon before they went bankrupt). VW simply stands to gain from Opel's being broken, and Magna actually intends to make cars.
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Tim 11:11AM (9/28/2009)
You have to draw a distinction between what Magna does (build complete cars) and what Aisin or similar do (build individual components, many of which are shared between different brands). I also imagine that the manufacturers are very careful about who they have do what, just to avoid any potential corporate espionage concerns.
Regardless, I agree with your bigger point. This isn't about Porsche, it's about VW.
psarhjinian 11:20AM (9/28/2009)
That's true, but it's more a semantic distinction:
* Toyota owns Aisin. Toyota makes cars. Aisin makes parts
* Magna owns (barely) Opel. Magna makes parts. Opel makes cars.
The end result is that someone buying an Aisin transmission or Magna, well, whatever is still funding a competitor, and you can bet that there's IP disclosure happening when someone specs out to Aisin. VW is the only one who seems to care about this, despite Magna selling parts (and performing subcontracted assembly) to all sorts of companies.
Level 12:30PM (9/28/2009)
What secrets??? are they talking about??? Any specific "secrets" they have in the engineering front has a Patent attached to it for the world to see...not to mention every other automotive manufacture always buys the competitor's car and dissects them to see what new techniques where used and alter them just enough to make it their own...Too much drama these days...
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rogermez 1:37PM (9/28/2009)
Not sure if it's a good idea but like others I'm not sure if I buy it. We'll see though, porsche usually has a haphazard history of retrofits.
You say batman I saw vawncast the world changes
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mbslrm 4:06PM (9/28/2009)
You can't say you didn't see this coming.
Magna now has a conflict of interest in their main operations.
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imoore 4:18PM (9/28/2009)
Well, VW has been threatening to drop Magna if it bought Opel, and now with Porsche, it's making good on that threat. Fiat is already planning on moving Chrysler and Jeep production to Italy. Next, Mercedes, BMW, And Aston Martin.
It's clear that Magna depends on contract manufacturing to help it stay afloat (building parts and componets make up the rest). Now, it seems to be alienating itself in the business buy buying Opel. For their sake, I hope thay can make the Opel deal work, or Magna is history.
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